State agency sues real estate company over Pure Michigan trademark

Nov. 22, 2013

Photo from Pure Michigan ad campaign. / Travel Michigan

Written by

Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau

LANSING — The Michigan Economic Development Corp. is suing a North Branch real estate company in federal court, alleging the company is infringing on the Pure Michigan trademark.

But Mark Gillim, a spokesman for Pure Michigan Real Estate, said Friday that if the state had a problem with him using the name, it never should have issued him a corporate license and real estate broker license for the company, which it did in February and March, respectively.

“We feel we were set up,” Gillim told the Free Press.

The MEDC’s lawsuit, filed Thursday, says the state has been using the Pure Michigan name since at least 2006 and has registered several trademarks on the name since that year.

Between February and September, “defendant made several requests to collaborate with MEDC and to use the Pure Michigan trademarks,” the MEDC alleges.

The MEDC, which is the state’s business development and tourism promotion arm, “has consistently denied defendant’s requests.”

The company’s name “is likely to lead the public to conclude, incorrectly, that the services that defendant is advertising ... are authorized by MEDC, when in fact they are not.”

The suit asks U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow to order the company to stop using the name and to turn over to the MEDC its Internet domain name and Facebook page, along with any profits it has made from using the name, plus unspecified damages.

Gillim of Lapeer said the company first contacted the MEDC about collaboration in February and it wasn’t until almost seven months later that the state agency complained about the trademark issue.

“Our company was established through the proper regulatory departments in the state of Michigan; now we have a non-regulatory arm of the government creating confusion and misleading the public,” he said.

A corporations search on the website of the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs shows more than a dozen corporate names and assumed names that use “Pure Michigan,” from “Pure Michigan Vodka” to “Pure Michigan Tour and Travel.”

Jeannie Vogel, a spokeswoman for the department, said when licensing corporations the department “has no authority to determine whether a name might infringe on property rights of another.” It can only determine whether the proposed name is different in some way than existing corporate names and complying with that requirement “does not create substantive rights to use of that corporate name,” she said.